1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to stringed musical instruments such as guitars, banjos, violins and mandolins, more specifically, to an apparatus and method for storing and retrieving personal information from within an instrument.
2. Prior Art
In the past, there has been a variety of training aids designed to help students of stringed musical instruments learn particular execution skills such as strumming, fingering, plucking, etc. For example, visual training aids that permit a student to see a display of fingering diagrams and visual/audio training aids that permit a student to see a display of fingering diagrams and to simultaneously hear instructions, notes or chords. While these aids provide training on a wide variety of musical styles and techniques they do not allow the user the capability of manually storing, retrieving, editing and deleting data, such as complete song tablature with lyrics and personal information from within the instrument.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,286,495, granted Sep. 1, 1981 to Roof, discloses a prior art visual training device. The Roof guitar has a first array of lights embedded in its fingerboard and a second array of lights mounted near the sounding hole. Each of the fingerboard lights is located near different finger positions. When energized, the fingerboard act as visual fingering indicators by displaying predetermined left-hand fingering patterns directly on the fingerboard. The lights on the second array indicate the proper strings to be strummed, plucked, picked or otherwise played with the right hand. A manual chord-select switch that is also mounted on the Roof guitar permits the student musician to select predetermined musical chords from a limited set of chords. The manual switches are used to control the light arrays so that visual fingering patterns and right-hand instructions of the selected chord are indicated by the lights. Although this device is made up of an electric guitar and a number of components it is limited to visual training information to the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,915,005, granted Apr. 10, 1990 to Shaffer et al., is another visual guitar training device. The Shaffer et al. patent discloses a fingering display that also includes an array of lights embedded in a guitar fingerboard. A number of electrical switches are manually operable by the musician to select a desired note. For each of the notes selected, a light display is activated that shows all the fingering positions for that note. If a scale or chord is selected, then all of the fingering positions for all of the notes of the entire scale or chord are displayed. Although the amount of information available in this device is greater than what is available in the Roof device, like the Roof device, the Shaffer et al. device is limited to visual training information to the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,791,848, granted Dec. 20, 1988 to Blum, jr., shows a prior art visual/audio guitar training system. The system is made up of an electric guitar and a number of electronic components. A two track cassette containing audio signals on one track and light-control signals on the other track is played by another component that includes a conventional two-channel cassette player. The audio signals from the player are outputted by one-channel output to a loudspeaker component to play music and/or instructions. Simultaneously, the light control signals are transmitted via the other channel output to the other processing circuit where they are processed and transmitted to the guitar fingerboard. The light-control signals selectively energize the lights to display particular fingering patterns of notes, chords, etc. corresponding to the music and/or instructions being played by the loudspeaker. Additionally, a conventional electric guitar output is transmitted from the guitar pickup to the loudspeaker so that the musical result of the student's playing may also be heard. Although this device comprises a visual display of information along with audio information it is still limited to training information to the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,408,914, granted Apr. 25, 1995 to Breitweiser, Jr., et al., is another visual/audio training system. The system is made up of an electric guitar and a number of electronic components. A fingering display (left hand) and a playing display (right hand) are mounted on the fingerboard. A control circuit, mounted on the body, receives input signals from one channel of a stereo for controlling the fingering and playing displays. The fingering and playing displays comprise an array of LEDs and LCDs that indicate the strings to finger, the fingers to use, the strings to play and the direction to play. A freeze control permits the user to freeze a section of the input signals in a buffer for repetitive practice. A tuning circuit permits the user to compare the tone of a string with a stored tone via a tuning display to help tune the instrument. Although the amount of information available in this device is greater than in the Blum device, the amount of information is still limited to training information to the user.
From these prior art examples, it can be seen that while providing instructional information for training on a wide variety of musical styles and techniques these devices are limited to the student musician for training purposes only.